The Dark Side of being a Nomad
It’s a romantic lifestyle from the outside. You constantly travel to new exciting destinations. You make a lot of money on your laptop. You never even have to suffer through a winter, unless you want to. But the lifestyle isn’t for everyone.
I’ve been a nomad since 2014. Nowadays, I’m more of a “slowmad”, meaning I actually have several “home bases”, which I think is essential for longevity. But it also takes more financial resources to set up bases.
It’s entirely fine to become a digital nomad with the plan of only doing it for a few years, or “indefinitely”. It’s kind of a crazy lifestyle to keep up long term without home bases. So ideally, you should have a long term plan to set up bases somewhere or you’ll go inside.
Even then, it does take a certain type of a person to succeed as a nomad. Here are some qualities that will make your life easier:
Introversion - life as a nomad can get lonely sometimes, so if you don’t constantly need to be talking to someone, that’ll help. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that if you’re an introvert, you NEVER need to talk to anyone.
A cold heart - there’s a lot more goodbyes. If you cry every time you have to say bye, this might not be for you. Of course, you get used to everthing.
Being comfortable with uncertainty - Flexibility is one of the major benefits of this lifestyle. If you like to plan your whole life in advance, the lifestyle might not suit you as well, because you’re not benefitting from one of the major advantages. Furthermore, when you have ties to several different countries, you’re also more likely to be thrown curveballs due to unforeseen circumstances - such as a country changing its visa rules or a global pandemic shutting down travel for years.
Not being easily attached - if you’re a sentimental person who gets attached to possessions, you’re gonna have a bad time. You can’t lug around dead weight for the sake of sentimentality. Want to have a plant? Even that is a problem, because even if you rent a permanent apartment somewhere, it’ll be difficult to water while you’re gone and your plant will die. Unless you get a plant watering person to do it for you. Who you then have to trust completely while you’re gone.
Not having pets - It’d be nice to have a dog, but like I said, I can’t even really have a plant.
Being young / single - relationships are a very obvious, glaring challenge if you’re constantly moving countries. So either you’re long distance for a bunch of the year OR you’re traveling with someone else. But traveling with someone else eats into one of the major benefits of this lifestyle - freedom. So unless you find the perfect person who has exactly the same taste for travel as you do, well, things get complicated.
Having a valuable passport - So much of this lifestyle relies on easy access to visas. It can already be a bit of a detriment to be forced to leave a country every 60 of 90 days, and those are the amount of days you’ll get in most countries if you have good passport. Privilege is a real thing here, because with a passport from a country that doesn’t give you access to many countries visa free, this lifestyle becomes a lot more difficult.
Furthermore, if you live this lifestyle for more than a few years, it’ll permanently change you.
You’ll no longer feel like you belong in your home country. If you don’t actively keep up friendships, you’ll lose them. Things will never be the same once you return. You’ll feel a certain disconnect. Furthermore, even if you eventually immigrate to another country, you’ll still always be an expat.
For me this was never that big of a deal because part of the reason I left my home in the originally was because I never felt like I belonged in the first place. Nowadays I feel the most at home in countries that already have a big expat community. Places like Thailand, Singapore, the UAE. Unsurprisingly I now best relate to people who also left their home countries, so in that way I’ve finally found my people. But if you’re someone who has deep roots to their home, just be vary of the possibility of this happening.
Another thing that I read about often is that returning to your old life might be very difficult in the future. Even once you burn out from travel and get tired of always living from a suitcase, you’ll miss the novelty and excitement once you return to your original home.
That said, it is an amazing lifestyle and I wouldn’t trade the past 10 years for anything. I made the right choice for me. But I also fit all the boxes highlighted above. I’m an introvert who’s comfortable with uncertainty and doesn’t get easily attached. And over the years I’ve mastered the ability to mitigate the downsides of this lifestyle, which can admittedly a lot of the times simply be taken care of by throwing money at the problems. And in that way, I’ve been lucky.
It’s an amazing lifestyle, just be aware, it’s not all roses.
